Natchitoches, LA

April 21, 2022
Population: 17,662

We arrived in Nachitoches in northwest Louisiana, the furthest we would be from New Orleans. It’s a very charming small city with a large, historic, and manicured downtown, welcoming tourists and retirees. A coffee shop on the main drag was happy to have me set up outside their door, and for the first time on this trip, it felt appropriate to put a tip jar on the piano. 

Although there was a fair amount of traffic, not many people stopped to listen or engage. It was surprising - I would be intrigued if an upright piano and an Asian person playing classical music (all oddities here) appeared in my hometown - but I can only guess as to why most were apathetic. It reminded me of the famous story of violinist Joshua Bell playing in a DC metro stop and no one giving a f***. Also interesting was the fact that a significant number of people dropped cash into the tip jar even though they didn’t stop to listen. This trip constantly made me ponder: what makes one listen…truly do nothing else in those couple minutes except to listen?

However, something always happens on this tour! A woman walking home from work wanted to play the piano, so I sat on the piano bench and helped her with pedaling as she played with arthritic fingers. A man and woman in a pickup truck pulled over and yelled, “Hey, can anyone play?” so I invited them to pull up. They were a father and daughter working at the hospital, and the dad (Lee) played a lively gospel tune on the piano. I didn’t know my piano could be that loud! 

Lee and I then performed our solo versions of Amazing Grace for each other and chatted. He was excited to know I am Japanese, as he had been stationed in Japan when he was in the military. It turned out that he is a pastor of a church of his own denomination. He said they mostly worshipped through gospel music and said we were more than welcome to join the service on Sunday (this was on Thursday). We were really sorry that we had to turn around and start traveling back to New Orleans the next day, since Joel’s time was coming to an end and he would fly out from New Orleans, and we wouldn’t be able to go to the service. We were truly uplifted by his bigger-than-life personality, warmth, enthusiasm for us and for music. We considered ourselves lucky and so we continued on.